Emma Thompson - Biography - IMDb Emma Thompson Biography Showing all 91 items Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trivia (52) | Personal Quotes (33) | Salary (1) Overview (2) 5' 8" (1.73 m) Mini Bio (1) Emma Thompson was born in London on April 15, 1959, into a family of actors - her father was Eric Thompson , who has passed away, and her mother, Phyllida Law , has co-starred with Thompson in several films (her sister, Sophie Thompson , is an actor as well). Her father was English-born and her mother is Scottish-born. Thompson's wit was cultivated by a cheerful, clever, creative family atmosphere, and she was a popular and successful student. She attended Cambridge University, studying English Literature, and was part of the university's Footlights Group, the famous group where, previously, many of the Monty Python members had first met. Thompson graduated in 1980 and embarked on her career in entertainment, beginning with stints on BBC radio and touring with comedy shows.

She soon got her first major break in television, on the comedy skit program Alfresco (1983), writing and performing along with her fellow Footlights Group alums Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie . She also worked on other TV comedy review programs in the mid-1980s, occasionally with some of her fellow Footlights alums, and often with actor Robbie Coltrane . Thompson found herself collaborating again with Fry in 1985, this time in his stage adaptation of the play "Me and My Girl" in London's West End, in which she had a leading role, playing Sally Smith. The show was a success and she received favorable reviews, and the strength of her performance led to her casting as the lead in the BBC television miniseries Fortunes of War (1987), in which Thompson and her co-star, Kenneth Branagh , play an English ex-patriate couple living in Eastern Europe as the Second World War erupts. Thompson won a BAFTA award for her work on the program. She married Branagh in 1989, continued to work with him professionally, and formed a production company with him.

In the late 80s and early 90s, she starred in a string of well-received and successful television and film productions, most notably her lead role in the Merchant-Ivory production of Howards End (1992), which confirmed her ability to carry a movie on both sides of the Atlantic and appropriately showered her with trans-Atlantic honors - both an Oscar and a BAFTA award. Since then, Thompson has continued to move effortlessly between the art film world and mainstream Hollywood, though even her Hollywood roles tend to be in more up-market productions. She continues to work on television as well, but is generally very selective about which roles she takes. She writes for the screen as well, such as the screenplay for Ang Lee 's Sense and Sensibility (1995), in which she also starred as Elinor Dashwood, and the teleplay adaptation of Margaret Edson 's acclaimed play Wit (2001), in which she also starred. Thompson is known for her sophisticated, skillful, though her critics say somewhat mannered, performances, and of course for her arch wit, which she is unafraid to point at herself - she is a fearless self-satirist.

Thompson and Branagh divorced in 1994, and Thompson is now married to fellow actor Greg Wise , who had played Willoughby in Ang Lee 's Sense and Sensibility (1995). Thompson and Wise have one child, Gaia, born in 1999. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Larry-115 Spouse (2) ( 20 August 1989 - 1 October 1995) (divorced) Trivia (52) Gave birth to her first child at age 40, a daughter Gaia Romilly Wise on December 4, 1999, and jokingly called her "jane.com". Child's father is her husband Greg Wise . Ranked #91 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997] Attended and graduated from Camden School for Girls, and the all-women Newnham College of Cambridge University with an English degree (1982). Jodhi May also attended Camden School for Girls.

She co-wrote, co-produced, and co-directed Cambridge University's first all-female revue "Woman's Hour" (1983). Elder sister of Sophie Thompson . Was named to the Board of Advisors for Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival (previously Fahrenheit Theater Company) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother is Phyllida Law , who has appeared in several movies with her. Her father was stage director Eric Thompson . Was originally slated to play the role of "God" in Kevin Smith 's Dogma (1999). She was unable to perform due to her pregnancy. Turned down the role of Anna Leonowens in Anna and the King (1999), which went to Jodie Foster . She was initially cast as the lead role in Basic Instinct (1992), but refused later on. About Sharon Stone 's appearance she said: "As far as I can see, from Sharon Stone 's love scene in Basic Instinct (1992), they molded her body out of tough Plasticine. She was shagging Michael Douglas like a donkey, and not an inch moved. If that had been me, there would have been things flying around hitting me in the eye.".

Speaks French and Spanish fluently. Resides across the street from her mother and down the street from her sister. Her brother-in-law is Richard Lumsden , a British actor-comedian. She was ranked fifth in the 2001 Orange Film Survey of greatest British film actresses. Is one of only ten actors who have been nominated for both a Supporting and Lead Acting Academy Award in the same year for their achievements in two different movies. The other nine are Fay Bainter , Cate Blanchett , Teresa Wright , Barry Fitzgerald (nominated in both categories for the same role in the same movie), Jessica Lange , Sigourney Weaver , Al Pacino , Holly Hunter , Julianne Moore and Jamie Foxx . Holly Hunter received her double-nomination in the same year that Thompson did. Has one song dedicated to her and named after her, on famous French singer Georges Moustaki 's album "Moustaki" (2003). Is the only person to have won Academy awards for both acting and writing. She won Best Actress for Howards End (1992), and Best Adapted Screenplay for Sense and Sensibility (1995).

Accepted the role of Professor Trelawny in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) to impress her daughter, Gaia. Read English Literature at Cambridge University. Used to keep her Oscar statuettes in her bathroom but had to move her Oscars to make room for her daughter Gaia's artwork. She now keeps them in her office. Her performance as Miss Kenton in The Remains of the Day (1993) is ranked #52 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006). She was a member of the Cambridge Footlights and in 1981, along with Stephen Fry , Tony Slattery , Hugh Laurie , Paul Dwyer and Paul Shearer , she became the winner of the first ever Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Has played Hugh Grant 's love interest in Sense and Sensibility (1995) and his sister in in Love Actually (2003). Won both of her Oscars for films that also featured actors she would work with again in the Harry Potter films.

Helena Bonham Carter , who appeared in Howards End (1992), also played Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Alan Rickman , who appeared in Sense and Sensibility (1995), had played Professor Severus Snape in most of the films so far. Was considered for the lead role of Emma Peel in the high-profile film adaptation of The Avengers (1998), which went to Uma Thurman . Good friends with Meryl Streep after starring with her in Angels in America (2003). Though she is not seen in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) after her character is fired, it is her voice that speaks the prophecy that Harry retrieves at the film's ending. Was to executive produce the film "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline", that was to be written and directed by Fay Efrosini Lellios (1998). Actors Sherilyn Fenn , Kate Winslet , Rufus Sewell , Miranda Richardson and Paul McGann were involved in the project. The shooting was set to start in June 1998 in New Hampshire. The film was canceled due to financial withdrawal.

Whilst working on the Oscar winning script for Sense and Sensibility (1995), Emma's computer developed a serious problem and she was unable to locate the file. She took the computer to Stephen Fry who, after seven hours, finally managed to retrieve the script. Ex-sister-in-law of Joyce Branagh . Returned to work eight months after giving birth to her daughter Gaia in order to begin filming Wit (2001). Good friends with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hayley Atwell . She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6714 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on August 6, 2010. Among those who helped her celebrate were Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Laurie . Met husband-to-be Greg Wise on the set of Sense and Sensibility (1995). First experience of Los Angeles occurred in 1973 when, at age 14, she accompanied her father Eric Thompson who was scheduled to direct a theatrical production of Alan Ayckbourn 's "The Norman Conquests" at the Ahmanson Theatre.

Coincidentally, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (adjacent to the Ahmanson) would be where, 20 years on, Thompson was awarded her first Best Actress Oscar for Howards End (1992) in 1993. On August 7, 2010, she was awarded a Star (#2416) on the Hollywood Walk of Fame right outside the 'British' landmark pub the Pig 'n' Whistle. Longtime friend Hugh Laurie was on hand to deliver fond words of commendation. Prior to giving birth to her daughter Gaia in 1999, Thompson became pregnant by her then-husband Kenneth Branagh in 1994 and partner Greg Wise in 1997; she suffered miscarriages on both occasions. Thompson and Wise used IVF to conceive Gaia. Several of her Harry Potter castmates have appeared in her Nanny McPhee films as well: Imelda Staunton , Kelly Macdonald , Ralph Fiennes , Maggie Smith and Rhys Ifans . Has been best friends with Simon McBurney ever since they were teenagers.

According to a 2012 Guardian profile of Emma Thompson, in 2003, she and Greg Wise (who had already had their daughter, Gaia), informally adopted a teenage boy. Their son, Tindyebwa ("Tindy") Agaba, was a former child soldier from Rwanda whom Thompson first met when he was 16 at a party for the charity organization the Refugee Council. Tindy's family had died before or during the Rwandan genocide, and after he escaped from his forced child soldier-hood, he lived on the streets of London before receiving aid from the Refugee Council. Thompson, Leonardo DiCaprio , Tilda Swinton , Marion Cotillard , Tom Hanks , Daniel Brühl and Jake Gyllenhaal are the only actors to receive a Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Critics' Choice Award nomination for the same performance and then fail to be Oscar-nominated for it: for their performances in Saving Mr.

Banks (2013), The Departed (2006), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Rust and Bone (2012), Captain Phillips (2013), Rush (2013) and Nightcrawler (2014), respectively. Has won two Oscars and at both ceremonies, her statuettes were presented to her by frequent co-star Sir Anthony Hopkins . As of 2014, has appeared in five films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Howards End (1992), In the Name of the Father (1993), The Remains of the Day (1993), Sense and Sensibility (1995) and An Education (2009). Was the 105th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for Howards End (1992) at The 65th Annual Academy Awards (1993) on March 29, 1993. Did an uncredited final polishing of the script for Paddington (2014). Both of her Oscars were presented to her by Sir Anthony Hopkins .

She appeared in four films directed by her then husband Kenneth Branagh : Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Peter's Friends (1992) and Much Ado About Nothing (1993). Is the only cast member to have a Shakespearian role directly after a British premiere attendance, upon the same day as the role other co-stars matched Emma Thompson's attended/support of a Shakespeare themed event. [May 1989] When she won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Howards End (1992), she received that from Sir Anthony Hopkins , who had been her co-star in that movie. The next year, she presented the Best Actor Oscar to Tom Hanks for his performance in Philadelphia (1993). The two would co-star in Saving Mr. Banks (2013). Shares her birthday with her Harry Potter co-star Emma Watson (April 15).

Along with Fay Bainter , Teresa Wright , Barry Fitzgerald , Jessica Lange , Sigourney Weaver , Al Pacino , Holly Hunter , Julianne Moore , Jamie Foxx and Cate Blanchett , she is one of only eleven actors to receive Academy Award nominations in two acting categories in the same year. She was nominated for Best Actress for The Remains of the Day (1993) and Best Supporting Actress for In the Name of the Father (1993) at the 66th Academy Awards in 1994. Hunter was likewise nominated for both awards at the 66th Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for The Piano (1993). Personal Quotes (33) [on her role in the Harry Potter film] I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch. I can't stand this new culture of the instant disposable celebrity. It's all so vulgar. I am who I am and there is nothing I can do about that. I have periods of intense activity, then stop.

My ideal is to work hard in the morning until I pick Gaia up from school. Just putting an empty square in my diary seems to make a space in my head, too. You have to be very good at saying no. My appearance has changed a lot over the years, but it has far more to do with how I feel about being a woman. I've never thought of myself as vain. When I was at Cambridge, I shaved my head and wore baggy clothes. What I did was to desexualise myself. It was partly to do with the feminism of that time: militant and grungy. That's all changed now, though I don't think it is liberating to get your tits out. I don't hold with that. But I am much more comfortable with being a woman now than I was in my twenties. But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I've failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don't get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me. But in small matters, I am not calm at all. My worst quality is impatience.

I mind having to look pretty, that's what I mind, because it is so much more of an effort. Liam Neeson , quite frankly, is sex on legs. Always has been. Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we've stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos. I've realized that in all the great stories, even if there's a happily-ever-after ending, there's something sad. Acting simply cannot be about how you look. It would be very difficult to make a film where you have to be beautiful in every shot. You have to put so much effort into it; you have to hold your head at particular angles, put the light in a certain way and I don't like acting like that. I like to act unconscious of how I look. The first time I was nominated, I didn't know anything about the Oscars. That was almost 15 years ago. I just did Oscar week and enjoyed it very much because I was with my mum. Even so, each time it's happened I've come down with some ghastly infection.

It is overwhelming for people. It has nothing to do really at all with your performance. It comes down to if you get an Oscar for your film, then the revenue for your film goes up. They mean a great deal. I can't deny it. I'm very lucky I write as well. I don't see how I could be as effective a mother as I'd like to be if I had to go away and act all the time. So I've sort of pulled back from acting, which is fine, because I've found over the years - and this was a surprise to me - that I can get the same kind of creative satisfaction from writing as I have heretofore gotten out of acting. It's very encouraging, really. [1992] We just did Hamlet with Sir John Gielgud and it was so luvvy it wasn't true. [on the personality of P.L. Travers and Saving Mr. Banks (2013)] She is a rather extraordinary combination of things. I suppose that was the scary thing about playing her. In film, we often get to play someone who is emotionally or morally consistent in some way, and she was not consistent in any way.

My godfather said that 'story' was about taking the chaotic jigsaw of life, making it into a picture and putting a frame around it so that we could look at it, have control over it. Story and art are the humanizing elements in us. [on being reminded she once claimed that picturing the men she had slept with helped her drift off] I haven't done that in a long time. I'm more likely to rehearse casserole recipes, which perhaps is a sad indictment of my state of mind. Once you're a mom, you've been split into two people. Like Peter Pan and his shadow. Th nanny story is essentially the western. It's the stranger from out of town who comes into the situation of conflict, solves the issues using unorthodox methods and then must depart. Shane and Buffalo Bill turn up as Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins in the female world. [Walt] Disney had a very Dickensian childhood. Disneyland was a way of rendering the world a safe place for himself and other children. Why insist on building a new border between human beings in an ever-shrinking world where we are still struggling to live alongside each other?

[on her appearance on 'the red carpet', clad in a hot pink number] It's Stella McCartney. It was actually much shorter on the runway, but when I tried it on it was a bit mutton-dressed-as-a-lamb, so I had it lengthened. I like my legs but not the top bits very much. I would rather have a root canal treatment for a year than go on Twitter or Facebook. The irony of Facebook is [that you speak out but] don't say it to anybody's face. It revolts me, repels me. I have the same career trajectory as Maggie Smith. I was passionate about comedy. I wanted to be Lily Tomlin. I wanted that career. Write my own stuff and play it. And I did it for awhile. I had my own series which was so badly reviewed by he critics I thought I can't do this anymore. [on working with Tom Hanks in Saving Mr. Banks (2013)] It was such fun. You can imagine. He's a darling and such a good actor. We've known each other on a social level for some time and we always said "What can we do? What can we do?".

And this turned up and it was sort of perfect. To be perfectly frank, I sometimes think that the young must get very bored with the parts that they are required to play. It's not as though there are that many very complex, interesting roles for anyone. The guys are now required to stand around looking beautiful and be superheroes. And I'm very, very bored. They must be bored too. Where are all the dramas we used to love? Where are all the stories? [on her career moments] I said to my agent, "I need to earn money. Get me a job." The first three that came up were a very, very old lady in a wheelchair, Bradley Cooper's mother, and Mother Theresa. I thought, "Well, clearly I have to do something to turn around the Nanny McPhee image as it's gone into people's minds and stayed there." In the end, other things turned up. It was very funny, but Mother Theresa would have just put the tin lid on it really. When my mum was young, everyone wanted to be in their thirties. Now people are desperate to put the clock back, and there's something absolutely tragic about that.

And the loss of our engagement with our aging and getting older and wiser and having more skills - a wider palette - we've lost that. We have granted youth power that it doesn't have. Books are like people, in that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them. Films are like history, and I think as people get older, they're so much more interesting. When you're doing theatre, people see the play, go home and don't remember it, but with film you can leave a lot of cannisters behind and can live in people's memories. I never expected to be a film actress and I wasn't terribly ambitious about it. And film acting and stage acting are not the same thing. In the theatre, you have to wear all your energy on the outside in order to project the character to the guy in the back row, but if you do that for film, it's too much. You have to internalize because a thought can be translated by a muscle in your face, and a film audience will be able to read that. [on renowned author E.M. Forster ] I've always been fascinated by the 19th Century, and his characters walk right off the page.

I leaned an awful lot about screenwriting from Tutti Frutti (1987) - about how important the standard of screenwriting is. Tutti Frutti was some of the best material I've ever had to work on - just sublime. It's got comedy, tragedy, all the elements - but it's written in such a way that they can all live and subsist together, because they were written by a genius and not by somebody who thinks, "Now I'll do the sad bit." You see that in film after film and TV programme after TV programme, where it's writing by numbers. You look at Tutti Frutti and you say to every screenwriter, "Watch this." Salary (1) Emma Thompson Guests on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon - NBC.com #EmmaThompson Emma Thompson is an Academy Award-winning actress. She first gained acclaim for her performance in a pair of 1987 BBC series, Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War. Thompson won her first Oscar in 1993, for Best Actress, for Howard's End.

The next year, she received dual nominations in both acting categories for The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father. In 1996, Thompson took home a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for penning the big screen adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility; she was also Oscar-nominated for her performance. Thompson's other notable film roles include 2003's Love Actually and the HBO TV movie Angels in America, 2004's Nanny McPhee and its 2010 sequel, 2013's Saving Mr. Banks and the Harry Potter franchise. Follow Emma Thompson Charms BAFTA Crowd With Tales of Oscar Wins, Acting Pet Peeves and Being Angry at John Travolta | Hollywood Reporter Login to download Emma Thompson Charms BAFTA Crowd With Tales of Oscar Wins, Acting Pet Peeves and Being Angry at John Travolta 1:51 PM PST 11/24/2013 by Stuart Kemp COMMENTS Jamie Simonds/BAFTA The double-Oscar winning actress, writer and producer -- and star of the upcoming "Saving Mr.

Banks" -- turns up for one of the liveliest, funniest British Academy's Life in Pictures interviews to date. LONDON -- Double Oscar-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson regaled a packed British Academy of Film and Television Arts HQ in the British capital Sunday with Oscar tales, stories about being pissed at John Travolta and her take on why being a woman of a certain age means meaty roles are hard to come by. Having won three British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards herself, Thompson is no stranger to the corridors of British Academy power. Over the course of an hour and a half, Thompson breezily and humorously discussed her 30-year screen career onstage Sunday. STORY: 'Saving Mr. Banks' Star Emma Thompson Shares P.L. Travers Insights, Favorite Films Stopping to chastise the enthusiastic audience in the front row at the midway point for not letting her know her bra strap was visible in her chic black dress, Thompson said she was doing her hardest to entertain in spite of the fashion social faux pas. Thompson, who won her first Oscar just after a Golden Globe in 1993 for her turn in Howards End, described that win as a "totally surreal" experience.

She said that back in the early 1990s, the Academy Awards were a "very faraway thing" and that the Oscar statue was an icon "that belonged to Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn," not her. Thompson said she took her mom with her to the ceremony and had gotten dressed up in "posh frocks" at around 11 a.m., ahead of the ceremony. She said she remembered her mother's dress had a particularly long train, which caused her to choke "like a bulldog" when someone trod on it. But Thompson said all was not lost because nearly everyone that stood on the gown's train was famous, "which meant we stopped and chatted to a lot of very talented people" on the red carpet. It was when she went backstage after her winner's speech at the ceremony -- her mother had turned to her just before the winner's envelope was opened to tell her she had a snowball's chance in hell of winning -- that the magnitude and importance of the Oscar statue hit home. "I handed [the Oscar] to a security guard while I hiked up my tights -- there were no Spanx in those days -- and he looked at me like no one has ever looked at me.

It was like I'd handed him the Ark of the Covenant or something," she said, laughing. Thompson wrapped the trophy in some socks and put it in her carry-on luggage to take through LAX. Everyone in security wanted to hold "what must have looked like a nuclear warhead" on the scanners. "Even the captain on the flight home came down to see me and asked me if he could see it and hold it," she said. "I said I would prefer it if he went back to the cockpit and keep his eyes on the road." But her answer to the question of whether the Oscar win had been life-changing was succinct. "No," came the response. Thompson noted that the Oscar legend goes that actors don't work for a year after winning one, but she recalled that curse did not hold true for her. Her next screen role was in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day, a movie that reunited her with Anthony Hopkins onscreen. Thompson's mother sent Hopkins a note asking that he not "eat her," considering that he had just starred as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs prior to shooting Howards End.

In one of the interview's most revealing segments, Thompson grew visibly moved talking about her grandmother, who had spent her entire life in servitude from age 14 and had been raped and birthed a child by one of her masters. But asked if this knowledge had informed her portrayal of Miss Kenton opposite Hopkins' socially and sexually repressed character in Remains, Thompson said she simply tried to play the scene in front of her and bring the character and words to the screen. In 1996, Thompson won her second Oscar, this time for writing, picking up the best adapted screenplay statuette for Sense and Sensibility, the Ang Lee-directed movie in which she also starred. She won her second Golden Globe for the same work and picked up her third BAFTA for best actress for her turn in her own script.

When asked to adapt Sense and Sensibility, Thompson turned to her friend and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to ask her what to do "because she didn't know where to start." "She told me, adapt the whole book and then go from there," Thompson said, adding that her first script came in at around 500 pages before smiling to the audience and saying: "They're meant to be 90, you know." [pagebreak] Thompson described her joy at the "brutality" of Lee's direction notes on set after an initially frosty period when she and co-star Hugh Grant had suggested to Lee after one take that they move "over there and do it again." Thompson said Lee, who was making his English-language debut in 1995 with her script, fell silent, and the rest of the day's shoot was "sticky" but they got through it. "I realized that not once in his life had anyone ever asked him anything on set. He made films where actors and actresses never said or did anything he didn't tell them to do. They certainly do not make suggestions," Thompson said.

But she said after realizing that she had spent the night writing an apology to him, they must have passed in the corridor at night because he had written one to her and pushed it under her door. "After that, the notes were brutal and funny [from Ang]," Thompson explained, describing the first one she got from him as saying simply, "Don't look so old," while one to Kate Winslet in the film stated, "Don't worry, you'll get better." Thompson's BAFTA discussion was littered with her trademark humor -- she spent seven years as a stand-up comedienne and comedy writer before landing a part in TV's Tutti Frutti and Fortunes of War, both of which earned her British Academy Television Awards in 1988 -- throughout the evening hosted by journalist, broadcaster, critic and self-confessed Thompson fan Boyd Hilton. Thompson described how she has never been afraid to voice an opinion and how she plainly and sternly shouted at John Travolta while they were filming Primary Colors, "that film not about [former U.S.

president] Bill and Hilary Clinton." She said the problem had arisen a day after Travolta had exercised his turnaround clause in his contract that allowed him to come in late on a subsequent day's shoot if the previous day's filming had gone longer than 14 hours. She said that while Travolta was not one of the actors who had become "too grand" and starstruck by their own powers, he had come in late even though there had been nothing the crew could have done. " 'You're pissed at me,' John said pointing at me on set." Thompson smiled. " 'Yes I am,' I just told him, 'Yes I am.' " She said when young actors -- or any actors -- turn up late or seem like they don't want to be there, her advice to them is to get lost and let someone who really wants the job to do it. Thompson explained her hatred for tardiness. She said that when she was making Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman (an actor who himself has been the subject of a BAFTA Life in Pictures), he got stuck in traffic.

"He was so worried about being late and keeping people waiting that he got out of his car, took his shoes and ran in his socks to get to set on time," Thompson said. "That's who you want to work with, someone with that enthusiasm." She said that while she genuinely loves Hollywood, she reserves a good deal of hatred for the star system and the hierarchy it creates. She said Hollywood [and the studios] were adept at creating a situation of "better than, less than, better than, less than" with VIP areas on top of VIP areas and different colored tickets for premieres that always seem to leave her wondering just who you have to be to get into "that particular" area. "That is the one thing I really hate," Thompson said. She noted that for myriad reasons, the U.K. doesn't create that kind of atmosphere and that "no actor should ever be a part of it." Thompson described her latest turn as Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers in Disney's Saving Mr.

Banks as the hardest role she has ever taken on because the woman she portrayed was "inconsistent and complicated." Thompson described the script as "one of the best I've read in a long time" and said she was drawn to Travers, who behaved like a "total cow" at times because "you just didn't know what she was going to do from one minute to the next," such was her emotional state. Starring opposite Tom Hanks, who plays studio mogul Walt Disney in the movie, Thompson described working with her co-star as a great experience despite ending up with a perm, because she hates wigs. She said everyone had been surprised that Disney had allowed the use of the studio founder's image in a role that portrays him "smoking and drinking whisky." But she said the film is "about parenting and the effects that has on the soul of a child." She noted that if you "asked any woman of 50-ish years old" how often scripts and parts like these came their way, the answer would be very few. Other asides from Thompson included the jokey theory that if she hadn't spent "a very short few days" shooting two of the Harry Potter franchise movies in the U.K.

she felt she'd have had her actors' union Equity card "confiscated." Said Thompson, laughing, "We [the entire British acting profession] were all in them." The Oscar winner also described Richard Curtis, the writer of her first movie, The Tall Guy, who also wrote and directed Love, Actually as a one-man antidote to the British filmmaking penchant for all things gloomy, depressing and downbeat. "He's the embodiment of the milk of human kindness," Thompson said. "I've never seen anything else come out of him." Thompson left the stage to rapturous applause after suggesting that humor in everything is a mantra by which she lives. "It does help I think. [Not having humor] is like eating food without salt and pepper. It would be too bland. You could laugh or you could cry; that's where I want to be," Thompson remarked with a grin. Her honor roster also boasts an Emmy for her performance on Ellen in 1998. In 2010, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, which was written, produced and starred Thompson was nominated for a British Academy Children's award for best feature film.

BAFTA -- A Life in Pictures is a long-running series of onstage interviews in which some of the film world's leading talent discuss their lives and career and share insights into the experiences that helped them hone and develop their crafts. Other actors who have taken part include Hoffman, Hanks, Martin Scorsese, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Kenneth Branagh and Helen Mirren. Emma Wise (Thompson) - Genealogy Genealogy Join the world's largest family tree Gender Share your family tree and photos with the people you know and love Build your family tree online Share photos and videos Gaia Romilly Wise, Tindyebwa Agaba Wise Residences: Apr 15 1959 - London, England, UK Parents: Eric Norman Thompson, Phyllida Ann Law Sister: Eric N Thompson, Phyllida Thompson (born Law) Sister: sister About Emma Thompson One of the first ladies of contemporary British stage and cinema, Emma Thompson has won equal acclaim for her work as an actress and a screenwriter.

For a long time known as Kenneth Branagh 's other half, Thompson was able to demonstrate her considerable talent to an international audience with Oscar-winning mid-1990s work in such films as Howards End and Sense and Sensibility. Born April 15, 1959 in Paddington, West London, Thompson grew up in a household well-suited for creative expression. Both of her parents were actors, her father, Eric Thompson , the creator of the popular TV series The Magic Roundabout, and her actress mother, Phyllida Law , a cast member of This Poisoned Earth (1961), Otley (1968) and several other films. Thompson and her sister, Sophie (who also became an actress), enjoyed a fairly colorful upbringing; as Emma later said, "I was brought up by people who tended to giggle at funerals." She excelled at school, was well liked, and went on to enroll at Cambridge University in 1978. It was at Cambridge that Thompson started performing as part of the legendary Footlights Group, once home to various members of Monty Python, who provided a huge inspiration to the fledgling comedienne.

Unfortunately, Thompson's studies and her work with fellow Footlights members Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry were interrupted when her father had a debilitating stroke. Thompson went home for a few months, where she taught him how to speak again. After her return to Cambridge, she graduated in 1980 with a degree in English, and she got her first break working for a short-lived BBC radio show. Personal tragedy struck for Thompson in 1982 when her father died of a heart attack. Ironically, it was in the wake of this turmoil that her professional life began to move forward: she got a job touring with the popular satire - Not the Nine O'Clock News and worked with co-conspirators Fry and Laurie on the popular BBC comedy sketch show Alfresco. This led to Thompson's biggest break to date when she was picked for the lead in a revised version of the musical Me and My Girl. Coincidentally featuring a script by Fry, the show proved popular and established Thompson as a respected performer. She stayed with the show for over a year, after which she got her next big break when she was cast as one of the leads in the miniseries Fortunes of War (1988).

The other lead happened to be Kenneth Branagh, and the two were soon collaborating off-screen as well as on. Following Thompson's BAFTA Award for her work on the series (as well as a BAFTA for her role on the TV series Tutti Frutti), she helped Branagh form his own production company, Renaissance Films. In 1989, the same year that she starred in the nutty satire The Tall Guy (which teamed her with Black Adder stalwarts Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and Mel Smith) and in a televised version of Look Back in Anger with Branagh, she appeared as the French queen in Branagh's acclaimed adaptation of Henry V. Following the success of Henry V, Thompson had a droll turn as a frivolous aristocrat in Impromptu (1990) and then collaborated with Branagh on the noirish suspense thriller Dead Again in 1991. The film proved a relative hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and it further established the now-married Branagh and Thompson as the First Darlings of contemporary British theatre. The following year, Thompson came into her own with her starring role in Merchant Ivory's Howards End.

She won a number of awards, including an Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe for her portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, and she found herself an international success almost overnight. After a turn in the ensemble comedy Peter's Friends that same year, Thompson starred as Beatrice opposite Branagh's Benedict in his adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in 1993. That year proved an unqualified success for the actress, who was nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars, the former for her portrayal of a repressed housekeeper in Merchant Ivory's The Remains of the Day and the latter for her role as Daniel Day-Lewis's lawyer in In the Name of the Father. Although she didn't win either award, Thompson continued her triumphant streak when -- after starring in Junior in 1994 -- she adapted and starred in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility in 1995. Directed by Ang Lee, the film proved popular with critics and audiences alike, and it won Thompson a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. She also earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress Award, and a Golden Globe for Best Adapted Screenplay.

1995 also proved to be a turning point in Thompson's personal life, as, after a much-publicized separation, she and Branagh divorced. Just as well publicized was Thompson's subsequent relationship with Sense and Sensibility co-star Greg Wise. The somewhat tumultuous quality of her love life mirrored that of Dora Carrington, the character she played that year in Carrington. This story of the famed Bloomsbury painter was not nearly as successful as Sense, and Thompson was not seen again on the screen until 1997, when she starred in Alan Rickman's The Winter Guest. The film -- which featured the actress and her mother, Law, playing an estranged daughter and mother -- received fairly positive reviews. The following year, Thompson continued to win praise for her work with a starring role in Primary Colors and a guest spot on the sitcom Ellen, for which she won an Emmy. In 1999, Thompson announced her plans for semi-retirement: pregnant with Wise's child, she turned down a number of roles -- including that of God in Dogma -- in order to concentrate on her family. The two married in July 2003.

In the years that followed Thompson would still remain fairly active onscreen, with roles as a frustrated wife in Love Actually (which found her BAFTA nominated for Best Supporting Actress) and a missing journalist whose husband (played by Antonio Bandaras ) is looking for answers in Missing Argentina (which marked the second collaboration, after Carrington, between Thompson and director Christopher Hampton) serving to whet the appetites of longtime fans. For her role as a respected English professor who is forced to re-evaluate her life in Mike Nichols' made-for-television drama Wit (2001), the renowned veteran actress and screenwriter would earn Emmy nominations for both duties. Following an angelic turn in the HBO mini-series Angels in America, Thompson essayed a pair of magical roles in both Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Nanny McPhee - in which she potrayed a governess who utilizes supernatural powers to reign in her unruly young charges. Thompson then joined the cast of Marc Forster's fantasy comedy Stranger than Fiction, which Columbia slated for U.S. release in November of 2006. She plays Kay Eiffel, an author of thriller and espionage novels suffering from a massive writer's block.

The central character in Eiffel's book (an IRS agent played by Will Ferrell ) hears Kay's audible narration and - realizing that she's planning to kill him off - tries to find a way to stop her, with the help of Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman).

Question: Emma Thompson has won an 'Oscar' as Best Actress and for which other category?
Answer: (adapted) SCREENPLAY